Thursday, September 25, 2008

Online time growing in Canadians' daily lives

Yet people still loyal to traditional media, likely finding less time for outings, socializing

Techno-savvy Canadians are spending an increasing amount of their time online, but not necessarily at the expense of watching television, reading newspapers or other forms of so-called "traditional media."

That was among the findings of a wide-ranging survey on Internet usage in Canada released yesterday by the Canadian Internet Project, a research consortium funded by both government and private sector partners.

While the study found that Canadians are increasingly living in a Web-centric world, it failed to find a link between a 10 per cent decline in people's consumption of traditional media sources – namely television – between 2007 and 2004 and a simultaneous 30 per cent increase in time spent in front of a computer screen.

Instead, the national survey of over 3,000 people conducted last year found that consumption of traditional media has fallen more or less equally among Internet users and non-users since the project collected data in 2004.

Interesting article in today's Toronto Sun ... you can read the rest of it here.

Here are some stats for you from that article:

* 95% - the % of Canadian Internet users who use email* 78% - the level of Internet penetration in Canadian in 2007* 51% - the % of Canada's most elderly population (60 years and older) who are online* 40% - % of Canadians who use the Internet 15 hours or more each week* 80% - Canadian males online* 77% - Canadian females online* 30% - Canadians who use wireless devises* 12% - Canadians who have never used the Internet

I'm not surprised that almost half of Canada uses the Internet 15 hours or more. I'm on it waaaaaaaaay more than that.